Student Type: Transition Award

Leona DeOliveira feels that she has finally found her calling.

Originally from Vancouver Island, Leona moved to Alberta in her 20s to work as a welder. It was there that she met her husband. After moving back to the Island together, Leona realized that welding wasn’t the life for her. She became interested in health and active living, working as an administrator, and later a teacher, at a yoga studio. Once they had kids, Leona and her husband “were fortunate that I could stay home and care for them.” She felt fulfilled, “spending my time caring for my family and making a life raising my kids.”

During the Pandemic, Leona briefly considered a career in healthcare, seeing the strain on nurses and wishing she could help. But she decided it wasn’t the time: “I told myself I was too old to go back to school and I let that dream fade away.”

That all changed three years ago, when her husband had a massive heart attack, resulting in an induced coma and time spent in the CCU. Thankfully, her husband has made an incredible recovery. “He is stronger everyday and his heart is doing really well,” she says. Going through such a traumatic medical experience reaffirmed Leona’s drive to pursue a career in healthcare: “I realized I had missed my calling.”

Leona planned to pursue nursing but first required some upgrading to her math and science pre-requisites through Adult Basic Education (ABE) courses. Taking the ABE courses was like a test run for Leona and her family to see how a full-time class schedule would fit into their busy lives. With a little maneuvering, they found they could do it.

Leona started in the Practical Nursing (PN) program at Vancouver Island University in January. The workload is intense, but she is loving it so far. Leona is particularly excited about upcoming practicum terms, in which students gain experience through working in different fields of nursing as well as a chance to explore career options. Leona isn’t yet set on a particular field but finds herself drawn to long-term care and cardiovascular nursing.

Leona is a recipient of the BC Scholarship Society’s 2024 Transition Award, an award that helps adult learners like her transition from Adult Basic Education (ABE) courses to enrolling in full-time post-secondary programs. For Leona, receiving the award has been “incredibly helpful.” She notes that “it’s a big thing to take on a career change” at this point in her life, and the award has validated this is as an important and worthwhile pursuit for her and her family.

Working towards her diploma and caring for her family has required careful planning and time management, such as meal prepping for the week on Sundays. With her two kids (now six years old and eight years old) both in school, scheduling drop-offs and pick-ups around classes can be tough. Leona is thankful for the help of her husband and mother, who fill in when she’s busy with classes. Ever positive, Leona is quick to point out how lucky she is and highlight the fortuitus events that led her to this point. Her story exemplifies her belief that “it’s never too late to follow your dreams.”

I grew up in the little farming town of Glencoe, in southwestern Ontario. I’m definitely the black sheep in my family. While the rest of my siblings were playing hockey, I loved to read and write stories. My romance with books started at a really young age. I really enjoyed jumping between fiction and nonfiction. I remember reading Lord of the Rings as a kid, and then trying to write my own version of it. There was no limit to my imagination!

But I never thought I could be a writer, so I took practical training in culinary arts when I was older and graduated as a chef in 2019. But in 2022, I had to walk away from that career, because of health issues, so I was left searching.  What do I do now?

I decided to return to writing.  I found out about an open studies Creative Writing course at Selkirk College but in order to take that training, I had to take an upgraded English course first. So, I enrolled in one and found the course instructor to be very supportive of my writing ambitions and encouraged me to enroll in an Associate Arts Program.  She even pointed me in the direction of the BC Scholarship Society so that I could apply for a Transition Award for ABE students pursuing post-secondary education.   When I got the $5,000 Award, I was like, “Holy crap this is really happening.” I was in shock. It’s not every day that good stuff happens to me.

I am really enjoying the Arts Program and have discovered my own writing style. I wrote a book during the pandemic, and had some poetry published. I think writing to me, is a way to make my own weird mark on the world; like, “Hey, I was here.” I still find it bizarre to hear how people react to stuff that was just in my head, before I wrote it down. I guess the joy for me is to create puzzles within my stories, that will grab or intrigue the reader. It’s like music when you get it right. And I love this sense of connecting with people through the stories, and hopefully moving them in some way.  It’s like holding hands with them through time and space, and our imaginations.

Thanks to the BC Scholarship Society and the Transition Award Program for helping me pursue a new dream.

IN HIS OWN WORDS:

I’ve spent most of my life in Tofino, a small town of 1500. So living in Vancouver the last five years has been an eye opener. Because there are humans everywhere. When I first moved here, getting on the bus was intimidating. People avoid eye contact. They don’t do that in a small town. Everyone knows everybody there. So, it’s different here.  But I have learned to live with the city again. I get on that bus almost every day.

Because I’m a 48 years old student, with a dream, and I feel like the luckiest person alive.

The early years of my story aren’t unusual in our community. A broken family. Father raised in a residential school. Telling us to forget our Indigenous heritage. Try to fit in. Growing up in East Van till I was thirteen. Moving around a lot. Then moving up to Tofino to be with my father. My family’s ancestral homeland. I felt immediately at home there. But a relationship and family came along soon, and I never got to finish school. I worked different jobs, but always something nagged at me. A dream not birthed yet. Laying like an egg inside me. And then the gift of a job in an art gallery, learning about art and artifacts, laying a seed for the future. Then a wonderful job as a tribal park guardian brought me closer to nature and my heritage again.

But still there was something missing. So, when Covid hit, I contacted the native education college in Vancouver, and signed up for three courses. It was tough going back to school in my 40’s. Humbling. Being twice the age of most of the students. “What’s grandpa doing here?” their eyes said, But I stuck with it, and before long, my brain was on fire with learning. Learning how our chromosomes can track everything. How languages, dialects, and ancient cultures are disappearing world-wide. And then I felt the egg cracking inside me. A purpose coming alive. And when I got accepted for an internship at museum of anthropology at UBC and received a Transition Award from the BC Scholarship Society to pay for my training there, my dream came alive.

I began working every day in the museum, poring over Indigenous art and artifacts, learning how to be a curator. Surrounded by the treasures of my people. The art of our dreamers and storytellers. And I thought “These need to come home. Where our young people can see and feel them. Re-connect with their roots. In the lands that these treasures were birthed in.” Do you know there is not one Indigenous museum on native land in this country? Our treasures sit in cold, glass cases, far away from the land, and soil, and the people that created them. The people that need them.

So that is my dream. To create the first Indigenous museum on first nations lands. To see our treasures brought home. That is what I am working towards now. That is the egg that has hatched inside my heart, and has turned my life into a beautiful journey. That is why I get on the bus every day. Some people think I am crazy at 48 to have such a dream. But I already have a piece of land to build our museum on. The dream has begun to take shape. So, if you think you are too old to dream, I’m proof you’re not. Take a chance. Do what I did and apply for the Transition Award from the Scholarship Society. Because we all deserve a second chance. An opportunity to dream again.

To give birth to the silent treasures that lay inside each one of us.